You have to wonder if Opposition Leader Peter Dutton can take a trick.
Last Friday he ventured into the outer Melbourne seat of Aston vacated by the controversial former cabinet minister Alan Tudge to begin campaigning to retain it.
He didn’t have a candidate, but that didn’t stop him bagging Labor for having one without “a democratic process”.
That morning Anthony Albanese was also in the electorate to launch his candidate, Mary Doyle’s campaign; she ran Tudge close last May and was the uncontested choice of the locals in the party.
She has a 2.8 per cent gap to bridge.
On Monday the Speaker of Parliament Milton Dick caught Dutton and the Victorian Liberals with their pants down when he announced the by-election for April 1.
The Liberals’ state president Greg Mirabella wrote to party members stating the bleeding obvious: “Every day we do not have a candidate we are losing votes” and the administrative committee canned Peter Dutton’s “democratic process” and decided it would choose one.
As if to prove Mirabella right, Mary Doyle is off and running, her 2022 team has been resurrected and she is about to move into a rented campaign office.
Labor intends to run as strong a grassroots campaign as it can –perhaps taking a leaf out of the Greens’ book, though even that party was scrambling for a candidate this week.
On Tuesday there was uproar in the Liberals’ state parliamentary party room’s meeting with members unimpressed the executive couldn’t organise a plebiscite in the seat for this weekend.
The choice boiled down to two accomplished women of Indian heritage neither of whom live in the electorate, but at least the party saved the federal leader the embarrassment of ignoring his plea for a woman to carry the party’s banner.
Melbourne City councillor and barrister Roshena Campbell won the night – against oncologist, Fulbright scholar and Guardian columnist Ranjana Srivastava – with the support of former treasurer Josh Frydenberg.
Campbell is expected to announce she will move from her inner-city Fitzroy terrace to the electorate if she wins the seat.
Although Dutton was shadowing Prime Minister Albanese in Western Australia this week he immediately claimed underdog status, which flies in the face of 100 years of by-election history.
It is that long since a government has won an opposition-held seat at a by-election.
There’s no doubt the ghost of Alan Tudge hangs over the contest; Dutton became almost tongue-tied trying to admit it and deny it at the same time.
“I think it’s a tough seat for us to retain. Alan Tudge has done a great job as a local member, but it’s a tough and difficult circumstance in any by-election.”
He didn’t explain that what was making it particularly tough was any “great job” Tudge did was completely overshadowed by damning evidence to the robodebt royal commission that he unscrupulously pursued whistleblower victims of the illegal scheme. He released their private details to the media, and in one instance of a man who committed suicide after receiving a notice.
Perhaps that’s what the Opposition Leader meant when he went on to say: “There are a lot of local issues at play.”
Dutton claims Labor is still enjoying a honeymoon and certainly three opinion polls out this week have the government falling from the stratosphere to the upper atmosphere with an average two-party-preferred lead in the double digits.
Dutton is still flatlining in all the polls.
If the Liberals lose the poll on April 1, one of his MPs says it would deal a fatal blow to his leadership.
According to ABC election analyst Antony Green the average swing against a first-term government is 1.7 per cent.
If the Liberals don’t come close, doubts about Dutton’s electoral appeal will be amplified.
Ironically while Labor will be hoping the Greens do at least as well as they did last May with nearly 12,000 votes for the preferences this could deliver, party leader Adam Bandt has joined Peter Dutton in attacking the government’s performance on cost of living.
By-elections are often seen as a chance to send a government a message without defeating it.
Adam Bandt wants to turn Aston into a protest against both major parties.
He highlights their support for new coal and gas and for the stage-three tax cuts and their “total neglect of renters”.
But how this tack will resonate in the outer suburban seat with a high percentage of self-employed tradies and contractors is highly problematic.
According to RedBridge director Kos Samaras his research shows the electorate is no Kooyong or Wentworth and is not very “Teal prone”.
Dutton will be hoping Scott Morrison’s SUV-owning “tradies” will drive home to him.
Paul Bongiorno AM is a veteran of the Canberra Press Gallery, with more than 40 years’ experience covering Australian politics
